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Abstract: Language learning involves abstracting generalizations which operate across linguistic items. According to statistical learning approaches, these emerge on the basis of exposure to the input, but what are the mechanisms that underpin this process? My work explores the extent to which language learning can be explained under a discriminative, error-driven account, based on well-understood principles developed in the study of animal learning. Within this framework, learners process language predictively, continually generating expectations about upcoming input and updating their representations in response to prediction errors. My talk presents data from two learning language learning experiments: An experiment in which 7-8-year-olds learn novel language structures in a novel language (Japanese) via a computerized game, and an eye-tracked artificial language experiment with adults. The child study provides evidence for a key prediction of the discriminative, error-driven account: generalization is boosted by witnessing varied exemplars in the input, which allows linguistic structures to be dissociated from trained instances. The adult eye-tracking study in turn provides direct evidence for a central assumption of this account: that learners generate predictions during language learning. By comparing prefixing and suffixing languages, we further show that linguistic orders that facilitate prediction support more effective learning. In both experiments, we observed substantial individual differences. In the child study, these included notable interactions with a cognitive measure (digit span). Overall, these findings support the discriminative, error-driven account but highlight the limitations of extrapolating from idealized model performance to real human learners operating in noisy environments.

Biography: Professor Liz Wonnacott completed her undergraduate degree in Linguistics and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Edinburgh in 2000, before moving to the United States to undertake a PhD in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the University of Rochester, which she completed in 2006. She subsequently returned to the UK, where she spent six years as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, followed by appointments as Assistant and Associate Professor at the University of Warwick and University College London (UCL). Dr Wonnacott is currently Professor of Language Science in the Department of Education at the University of Oxford and a Supernumerary Fellow at St John's College.